On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 12:45:30PM -0700, Kip Warner wrote: > Greetings Everyone, > > I've been looking for a while, but no luck. Is there a table somewhere > that summarizes the different architecture names like i386, i586, i686, > amd64, ia64, and so on along with the criteria for hardware qualifying > under that name?
Are you asking about the Debian package architecture or the output of uname? Debian does not use i586 and i686 for package architectures, and i386 really means i486 or above (for reasons I won't get into here). amd64 machines need to support the lm and nx attributes in /proc/cpuinfo. ia64 processors support a different architecture known as Itanium. > e.g. Does i686 mandate SSE2? As far as uname, not all machines that output i686 will support SSE2. Your assumption should be that i686 == Pentium Pro, with the caveat that not all i686 machines support cmov (some Via chips do not). There are special directories on some (Debian) architectures, such as i386, in which you can place binaries built for, say, i686. The linker will automatically use them if the processor supports it and will ignore them otherwise. This allows significant performance improvements where this matters. This is how libc6-i686 works. -- brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US +1 832 623 2791 | http://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only OpenPGP: RSA v4 4096b: 88AC E9B2 9196 305B A994 7552 F1BA 225C 0223 B187
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